THE EUCALYPTUS 



By Harry D. Tiemann 



eUCALYPTUS for California is a 

 proposition worthy of hearty en- 

 dorsement, but it should stand 

 upon its own merits and not upon 

 some fictitious attributes. Otherwise 

 vast disappointment and losses to 

 the hundreds of small investors who 

 are counting upon the Eucalyptus 

 as a timber producing tree are m 

 store. In your July number appears an 

 interesting article upon San Diego's 

 Municipal Forest. The statement is 

 there made that "Eucalyptus is an ac- 

 ceptable substitute for almost any of 

 our American hardwoods." In the same 

 issue there appears a news note entitled 

 Fast Growing Eucalyptus, to which has 

 been subjoined apparently by the editor 

 a comment that "it is almost unbeliev- 

 able that trees growing so rapidly pro- 

 duce a timber as hard and tough as 

 hickory." Unquestionably these state- 

 ments have been made in all good faith, 

 but evidently without a first-hand 

 knowledge of the kind of lumber which 

 these quickly growing trees less than 

 half a century old will produce. As 

 this lack of understanding is very gen- 

 eral and is likely to lead to serious con- 

 sequences, I would like, Mr. Editor, 

 with your assistance, to sound a note of 

 warning, since I have had considerable 

 experience in drying the wood from 

 these trees. 



While much that has been claimed as 

 to the marvelous growth of this tree is 

 indeed true, the rapid growing species, 

 particularly the blue gum, E. globulus, 

 which is the one of most consequence 

 is not to be considered a timber produc- 

 ing tree during its early life of thirty or 

 forty years, for reasons about to be 

 given. It is true that the old trees of 

 Australia which are of great age and 

 size produce lumber of good quality 

 which can be seasoned and utilized as 

 other hardwood lumber, but not so with 

 the young trees such as are growing in 

 California, less than forty years old. 



This is just where the fallacy in the ar- 

 guments of the eucalyptus promoters 

 comes in. The trees actually produce 

 in volume of green wood what is 

 claimed, but only a very small portion of 

 this is convertible into useful lumber. 

 The main troubles with the wood are 

 first, that the trees themselves while liv- 

 ing contain internal stresses, which 

 cause the logs to check as soon as the 

 tree is cut, and the boards to warp di- 

 rectly from the saw. Then in drying 

 the shrinkage is not only very unequal, 

 but it is three or four times as great as 

 hickory, and unlike other hardwoods, 

 it begins to shrink with the first loss of 

 moisture as high as eighty per cent of 

 the dry weight. Moreover the dry 

 wood will not hold its shape well. In 

 air drying the wood either checks badly, 

 honeycombs, or warps, generally all 

 three. Small specimens and occasion- 

 ally a larger piece of lumber, and very 

 carefully selected material have dried 

 successfully, but this represents so small 

 9 proportion of the standing timber that 

 the profit is gone. In some experiments 

 in drying this lumber in a special kiln 

 of my own invention I have succeeded 

 in turning out some really fine boards 

 v/hich will compare favorably with oak 

 and other hardwoods, but it must be 

 remembered that this represents se- 

 lected material, and probably from less 

 than one per cent of the standing trees, 

 and even so less than half of the scale 

 measure of the logs from which cut. 

 For small articles such as tool handles 

 good material can be had by selection, 

 and some concerns in California are 

 now manufacturing these, but the mar- 

 ket for this material is necessarily lim- 

 ited and such small stock does not re- 

 quire a very great stumpage. 



Mr. Watson in his article does not 

 state what species he is planting at San 

 Diego. It is possible that some of the 

 slower growing eucalypts, the value of 



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